June Sells Her Drawings

June loves riding her bike. There's a trail we especially love to take her to downtown by the canal. It winds through grassy fields, past docks and boat yards, to the light house on Cayuga Lake.

Wednesday we took a family walk on the trail. I saw it as an opportunity for some family time. June saw it as an opportunity to make a little money. She recently lost her first tooth and earned her first dollar from the tooth fairy.

Since then, she's disappeared with her pen and a stack of papers, making lists, scheming ways to make money. Her latest idea was to create a "mooooseuim" of drawings she could sell. I first took notice of this when I saw her sitting in one of our porch chairs on the curb of our street, an amazon box setup as a desk in front of her, with a sign that read, "Junes mooooseuim". Each drawing was appropriately priced at $68. For my drawing, I gave her 26 cents instead. She willingly accepted.

She spent an afternoon taping advertisements she drew to the neighbor's mailbox and wandering the street shouting, "Pictures! Get your pictures! Pictures for sale!" She was disappointed by the lack of foot traffic on our street. So when I suggested we walk the canal trail, her eyes became dollar signs and she excitedly grabbed her stack of pictures.

We walked the first stretch of the path without soliciting -  that was the deal we made with June. But the moment we started our journey back to the car, June didn't waste a minute. She pounced on the first person we saw, who just so happened to be a biker that had crashed his bike and was laying on the sidewalk. We watched his wheel get tangled in the leash of a dog with his owner walking by, and then watched as he crashed to the ground. The walker left, and the biker continued to struggle on the ground. As we approached him, he was still checking his bike for damage and it was obvious that the crash had caused some injury. I asked if he was okay. June followed my inquiry with her own, "Do you like pictures?!"

I knew where this was going and tried to mutter under my breath that she wait. But the injured biker had heard her. He looked at her and smiled, assuming this angel child was trying to cheer him up after his fall.

"Yes, little girl! Do you have a picture for me?"

To which June replied, "Do you got any money?"

*Nervous laughter from me*

He looked a little surprised and then said, "Oh, sorry! I don't have any!"

We spent the next minute talking June into giving this poor man a picture out of the goodness of her heart. It was every bit as awkward as you can imagine. To my relief, she finally grinned and handed him a drawing. He smiled and hobbled away.

I saw the opportunity as a teaching moment and asked her if it felt good to share her drawing with this poor man who had no money and was on the ground, injured. She gave me an, "Eh, yeah.." before running off to the next unassuming passerby, waving her pictures in the air, ready to earn her next dollar.